Special note. Last I week I started tracking Christmas songs currently on the Hot 100 in their own separate category and I will continue to do so until the end of the holiday season. Only one has shown up so far, but once Thanksgiving has passed, they should start showing up in droves as last year they were quite dominate on the charts.
Billboard Hot 100 Top 10:
1- "Circles" - Post Malone (+1) -- This seemed inevitable. "Someone You Loved" had previously celebrated three non-consecutive weeks at No. 1, but wasn't a particularly strong No. 1 as it had already been on the charts for a long time due to its slow ascent. Post Malone wasn't necessarily that strong either, but his song has been around for a shorter amount of time, so I was guessing it would naturally slide up to No. 1, which is pretty much the best way to describe its performance this week. Across the board, it only rose 3 percent on radio to 91.1 million audience impressions, it rose 2 percent on streaming to to 23.4 million U.S. streams, and it fell 7 percent in sales to 14,000 downloads sold. Billboard didn't report on what the numbers for "Someone You Loved" are this week, so I don't know how close it was, but I'm guessing it just narrowed it out as "Circles" actually falls a spot on the radio charts to No. 3, meaning it didn't pass "Someone You Loved" on radio. It just beat it out due to stronger sales and/or streaming. So I don't know how long this one is going to last at top, but I'm actually fine with it being here. It's Post Malone's fourth No. 1 on the Hot 100 following "rockstar," "Psycho" and "Sunflower." Even though it's not nearly as good as "Sunflower," it's most certainly miles better than those first two song.
2- "Someone You Loved" - Lewis Capaldi (-1) -- No shame here that Lewis fell a spot to No. 2. I'm just happy and surprised that his song managed to get to No. 1 in the first place after a really long rise to the top. This also could start to tumble down the charts a bit as the three songs right below it appear to have significantly more momentum.
3- "Good as Hell" - Lizzo (+1) -- When I saw "Circles" as the No. 1 song this week, I assumed it was because it had rose to No. 1 on the radio. Nope. As I previously mentioned, it fell to No. 3 on radio. The song that actually rose to No. 1 on radio is this one, "Good as Hell." That's a bit of a surprise for me, but a welcome surprise. I think this is an excellent song that deserves to be having this success. Again, Billboard didn't report a whole lot of numbers this week, so I'm going off pure guesswork here, but the obvious statement is that Lizzo just isn't as strong on sales and streaming. How close is that margin? I have no idea. But if I'm going to make a guess, I'd say that sometime in December is when Lizzo when takeover for "Circles," perhaps as early as next week?
4- "Memories" - Maroon 5 (+1) -- Another competitor for No. 1 is Maroon 5, who I assume is soaring up the radio charts as the radio always loves Maroon 5. I have no idea what the margins here are, but I imagine this song is going to be around for a while. Surprisingly, I have no issues with that. I was internally conflicted here because I've been very negative towards Maroon 5 for the majority of this decade, but I've just accepted that I enjoy this song, so I'm content that it's sticking around.
5- "Lose You to Love Me" - Selena Gomez (+3) -- After debuting at No. 1 a couple of weeks ago, Selena started a bit of a free fall down the top 10, making me nervous that her song just didn't have the necessary momentum to stick around, which is why I grateful to see it reverse course and go back into the top five. Hopefully it's here to stay this time around because this is very deserving of being a smash hit for much longer than a few weeks. Despite Billboard not having reported much this week, they did report that a huge 24 percent surge in airplay, up to 53.7 million audience impressions, is what boosted this song. Traction on radio is an excellent sign for its potential.
6- "Señorita" - Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello (-3) -- Just like "Circles" going No. 1 seemed inevitable this week, "Señorita" finally falling out of the top 10 also seemed inevitable. I wasn't sure when exactly it was going to happen, but when you spend 17 weeks in the top three, as well as 21 weeks in the top five, eventually that has to come to an end. Now it's worth noting that Billboard's calendar year ends in November, meaning this is the last week of tracking for their year end list as well as the last week for their 2010s decade list. That means songs like "Señorita" will get shortchanged on those charts because they didn't finish their run. For me, since my calendar year ends like normal people in December, songs will have another month left for my year end list. And when it comes to the decades list, what I've done in the past is include a song's entire run in the decade where it made the biggest impact. So before I create that final list, I will wait until every 2019 song has finished its run in the top 10 (because I only track the top 10 for my lists instead of the entire Hot 100). For "Señorita," if it lasts into January, I will be fair and include its entire run in the 2010s in my decades chart. It's only fair that way. Same goes for "Someone You Loved" and "Circles." When it comes to "Good as Hell," "Memories" and "Lose You to Love Me," I imagine they will build up more points in 2020 and thus they will be left off my 2010s chart completely and will get a head start on next decade's chart. But we'll see how things shape out.
7- "No Guidance" - Chris Brown & Drake (=) -- For some reason this song is still at No. 7. And I have no idea why. Can someone please kick it out?
8- "everything i wanted" - Billie Eilish (+66) -- This is a genuine shocker for me. When this song debuted last week, I didn't realize it debuted on a partial week and thus I wasn't sure if it would really catch on with the general public as its more of a depressing Emo song from Billie, which is not something that the general public gravitates to. But I guess I was proven wrong. At least initially. And I'm happy about that. The more that Billie becomes a huge thing, the better. Now given that this is the first full week of tracking for this song, that means next week is when its scheduled to experience the drop, so I'm guessing this will fall back out of the top 10 next week, but we'll see what happens. I would love it if this song was able to stick around in the top 10.
9- "10,000 Hours" - Dan + Shay & Justin Bieber (+1) -- Nothing is really ready to jump into the top 10 at the moment, which means this song slides up a spot. Of note, with Billie's arrival into the top 10, "Panini" by Lil Nas X has been booted. Good. Hopefully that spells the end of Lil Nas X's moment in the spotlight.
10- "Truth Hurts" - Lizzo (-4) -- Another surprise, apparently the floor just completely fell out from under "Truth Hurts" this week. Although admittedly it's probably Lizzo's own fault since "Good as Hell" is now getting all the attention. That's a fair trade, I think. "Truth Hurts" is fine, but "Good as Hell" is much better.
Rising on the Hot 100:
12- "Roxanne" - Arizona Zervas (+15) -- Make this go away.
15- "Lover" - Taylor Swift (+11) -- So it wasn't just a one-week rise for "Lover" last week following the new remix with Shawn Mendes. Of note, Billboard's rule is that a remix has to have at least 50 percent of the chart points in order for the new artists on the remix to be given credit on the charts, which is why Mr. Mendes has been left off. But I'm glad to see that he's had a positive effect in helping Taylor's song out. Despite a poor early singles choices for Taylor's latest album, there's a lot of good songs on that album, so if "Lover" performs well, it opens up the door for some of those other to potentially do well if Taylor decides to release them as singles.
16- "Woah" - Lil Baby (+3) -- Make this go away.
18- "BOP" - DaBaby (+49) -- Make this go away.
19- "Dance Monkey" - Tones and I (+4) -- This one got stuck for a bit last week, which wasn't a huge surprise. Usually when a song gets to this point, it becomes increasingly harder to continue soaring up the chart, meaning "Dance Monkey" still has a ways to go before it becomes a massive hit. But I still imagine that it will at least become a top 10 hit before too long. Although sometimes getting through the teens is like walking in quick sand. It's a tough final stretch to get through before a song officially breaks into the top 10. But let's hope "Dance Monkey" does it!
20- "Ballin'" - Mustard featuring Roddy Ricch (+5) -- Make this go away.
44- "Jerry Sprunger" - Tory Lanez & T-Pain (+39) -- Make this go away.
47- "What If I Never Get Over You" - Lady Antebellum (+7) -- It's not a completely country-less week on the charts this week. We have plenty of new arrivals to get to in a bit. But in terms of rising songs, Lady Antebellum is the only entry, giving us a perfect track record for good country songs rising on the charts as Lady Antebellum hitting top 50 is a welcome site. Let's hope they can get even higher. On a slightly different note, it's a bit strange that we have no significant risers below the top 50 this week. But no lost sleep for me. We'll quickly move onto the next section!
Christmas Songs:
31- "All I Want for Christmas is You" - Mariah Carey (+8) -- Yup, only Mariah again this week, but she jumps up eight more spots in her quest back to the top 10. As a reminder, last holiday season she managed to get all the way to No. 3. Is this the year she gets to No. 1? Also, since Thanksgiving is this week, that means Christmas season will be officially upon us next week, meaning we will hopefully start seeing more of these songs show up. Although with the way the tracking week goes, we may have to wait until the week after to get the full effect. But within two weeks, I anticipate this section to start growing in size as we get deep into the Christmas season.
New Arrivals:
49- "Reply" - A Boogie wit da Hoodie -- Nope.
55- "None of Your Concern" - Jhene Aiko featuring Big Sean -- I considered checking this one out, but neither artist has impressed me as of late, so I'm taking a pass.
60- "Watermelon Sugar" - Harry Styles -- Harry Styles' new album "Fine Line" is due December 13 and I'm excited to check it out. His lead-off single from that album, "Lights Up," is a perfectly enjoyable song, even if it wasn't as good as his singles from his debut album. And now we have "Watermelon Sugar"...? That's a unique title for a song. The title certainly has a 60's/70's feel to it, which I suppose makes it stand out in today's world. The song itself is nothing super unique, though. It has less of a retro groove to it and has more of a modern, typical pop feel to it. Lots of fruit metaphors here and I'm not 100 percent sure what all of it means because the song is doused in fruit without giving many clues as to what it's all referring to, outside Harry saying he wants this girl's belly, which is a strange body part to express desire for. I'm not sure how a girl would react in real life if I told her I wanted her belly. I suppose going along with all the fruitiness of the song, belly sounds close to berry, so there's that. If I don't think too much about what it means, the song has enough of a fun pop groove to be enjoyed, which is probably what the intention of the song is. I don't want to call it bubblegum pop, but I'm going from fruit to sugar here in saying either bubblegum or cotton candy is the type of pop/rock song that this is. It has no substance to it, but can still be enjoyed regardless. I'm just hoping the album itself has a bit more substance to it because "Lights Up" isn't exactly lighting up the radio and I'm not sure if this is going to do the trick, either. Harry deserves to have success, but he needs to release songs with a higher level of quality in order to obtain it. Although I played this for my nephew and got it stuck in his head rather quickly, so that's good for something, right?
66- "The Take" - Tory Lanez featuring Chris Brown -- Nope. Especially not considering that featured artist. Chris Brown needs to stop becoming a new thing again.
75- "Falling" - Trevor Daniel -- Do I know who Trevor Daniel is? I feel like he's shown up on the charts before in some fashion, but after listening to his song right here, I'm not really that interested in looking into that in depth. Trevor is one of our trap/hip-hop boys, which means I respect him for having a normal name instead of a dumb hip-hop name that makes me want to ignore him forever. And this is not really a hip-hop song through and through. This is probably closer to a pop feel with a hip-hop sound and flavor. And it's not particularly bad. But it's also not super unique or memorable.
87- "Beauty in the Benz" - Tory Lanez featuring Snoop Dogg -- Nope. But I'm guessing Tory Lanez released an album? Either Snoop Dogg jumped on to sing about getting high or Tory Lanez interpolated one of his songs, which is what I learned happened with last week with "Jerry Sprunger." T-Pain was there via interpolation.
89- "Up All Night" - Khalid -- Khalid is always a bit hit or miss for me. I'm not sure if he's actually talented when it comes to music. He has a good voice, but I feel like he always needs to be pointed in the right direction or have a bit of luck, because if he's left all alone like this, he comes up with boring songs. My nephew is sitting here listening to some of these songs with me (my nephew is almost 12 years old) and he says it's medium quality. Medium minus, specifically. He really enjoyed "Watermelon Sugar," but he says this is a more sad, breakup song that is less energetic and too slow. As I was playing this song, he kept asking me to play "Watermelon Sugar" instead. And I agree. This song doesn't have much energy to it, nor are those sad, lonely lyrics impactful enough to make me care about Khalid's breakup woes in this instance.
93- "We Back" - Jason Aldean -- It's Thanksgiving and I don't want to spend too much time on these country songs. My nephew calls this medium plus.
95- "Homesick" - Kane Brown -- My nephew calls this one medium quality. Better than "Up All Night," but not as good as "We Back" and not close to "Watermelon Sugar."
97- "Death" - Trippie Redd featuring DaBaby -- Nope.
99- "Hell Right" - Blake Shelton featuring Trace Adkins -- I'm not going to review this song with my nephew because of the title. We'll get to it next week.
100- "RITMO (Bad Boys for Life)" - The Black Eyed Peas & J Balvin -- The Black Eyed Peas? What decade are we in? They haven't even charted since 2011, nor have they released an album since 2010, unless you count whatever "Masters of the Sun Vol. 1," which Wikipedia claims was released in 2018 as a seventh studio album, but it made zero impact on the world. I guess "RITMO" is the song that's being promoted for "Bad Boys for Life," a movie that I have zero excitement for since I've not even seen the other "Bad Boys" movies, but that's a discussion for the other blog. But it confuses me that they reached out to The Black Eyed Peas and J Balvin for their big soundtrack song. Because that's a gross combination of nothingness. My nephew initially gave it a high minus, which is slightly higher than a medium plus for him, but as the song went on, he told me that the song was too repetitive, which caused it to get boring. By the end of the song, he downgraded it to a medium plus, then down to a medium. And I agree. I even might call it a medium minus or a low plus. It has a decent enough beat to make it serviceable, but it is just dull and lifeless. If this serves as a comeback for The Black Eyed Peas as well as a promotion for "Bad Boys for Life," this is a bad sign for both. It even took me a while to figure out what "RITMO" was since I assumed that was an acronym. But no, it's the Spanish word for rhythm.
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